Groups raising money to provide more beds for USS Edson

The USS Edson is a de-commissioned destroyer that now hosts a variety of events, including a haunted tour and sleepovers for various groups.

They are hoping you can help guess sleep as soundly as a sailor.

Each one of the mattresses on the USS Edson is custom made because of their size. Sailors who slept on them didn't exactly have a lot of space of padding.

"They are 72 inches long and 24 inches wide, they're actually 3 inches more narrow than the average crib mattress," said Carla Monteiro who works at the USS Edson.

The mattresses were taken out of the ship when it left it's mooring on the east coast in 2012.

Recently the owner of Prime Brothers furniture donated a third of the new mattresses.

Dan-Dan-The Mattressman out of Midland also helped get a special price on some mattresses so they were able to outfit 200 berths with the new mattresses.

"We pulled money from our general fund to cover what we didn't have, we're still about $3,500 short that we need to recover," said Mike Kegley.

Kegley worked for years to acquire a Naval ship like the one to be docked on the Saginaw River in Mid-Michigan.

The Edson saw action during the Vietnam war.

Kegley said the ship has become a tourist destination point.

The new mattresses were necessary so the destroyer can host sleepover events for different groups, the Boy Scouts, for example.

"We get calls every day to set up overnight encampments on our ship, and that's the reason for the mattresses so we can take any size group," Kegley said.

Any donation, either at the ship or online, would be greatly appreciated by the Edson staff.

The folks here at the USS Edson hope to have the mattress costs covered before they start their next big project, an electrical upgrade of the ship.